37 & 38: Intrusions on reality
37. Kings of Infinite Space, by James Hynes
I wasn't sure what to think of this novel, but halfway through it turned into a "well at least let's finish it" book. I dunno, I'm very lukewarm on it. I think it was supposed to be witty -- guess what, there is highly surreal campy cultish horror hiding behind the facade of a fallen academic's dead-end job in a Texas cubicle! Complete with Fringe-esque pale men who keep showing up and doing mysterious things, and strange undergrounds that are a little too overtly Dantean, a ghost cat, excruciating Texas twang verbal tics that are overdone, too. Like the clueless boss who mixes his metaphors EVERY TIME. Or the girlfriend who always says ain't/was and then helpfully winces and corrects herself to aren't/were every time, which after a time began to seem like a lazy author's way of getting around being snobbish toward a genuine undereducated poor southern girl. Like, if she hadn't been so helpfully self-abasing, he would've been too much of a snob to fuck her, or something? Poor Callie. Luckily it was her GREATEST DREAM to read the Norton Anthology and parade around in the protagonist's buttondown oxfords. (Hey Levelland, all two of you reading this, Callie is exactly like a young Kerri Rivera, I think. Sardonic, doesn't take shit. The most fun reading this book was picturing Kerri in her place.) This was kind of a fun take on zombies, I suppose, except the excruciating realities of a cubicle job AND the awful flat hellish Texan heat were so overdone that they occasionally went right over the top of surreal into belabored. This would have been a great update on the zombie genre if Shaun of the Dead hadn't already done it with more wit and humanity, you know?
38. Broken Harbor, by Tana French
Super glad I waited for this to come in at the library rather than buy it -- I love Tana French, but this was a terrible slog, had to force myself to finish it. I guess it's all been downhill since In The Woods, in my opinion, because in that book she was clever enough to combine an old mystery, a new mystery, and a love story gone wrong (plus it stars Clive Owen, in my head); in this one, we just had a new mystery that never quite lived up to its surreal touches, and I guessed 75% of the Great Big Twist about 100 pages in advance. There were none of the layers, especially in the main character, who was so emphatically Old School Boyo Hardbitten Irish Detective that he seemed to have no inner life whatsoever. Or, I guess this one did have an old story layered into the new/current story, but it wasn't really mysterious enough, it was just This Made Me A Tough Guy. Okay, so what? The most compelling part of this story was where Detective Hardbitten almost fell into bro love with his rookie partner, except he didn't. What a disappointment. Oh also, French's characters seem to all turn out to be mysterious synesthetes, but this seems to be an authorial tick more than anything else, and it got old. People are always shaking the mysterious waft of perfume out of their nose, or being surprised by weird theatrical flashbacks. Her writing isn't awful, but what seemed deft in novel #1 becomes old hat and annoying, to me, by #4. My recommendation: go read In The Woods if you haven't, or read it again (I might), and then maybe The Likeness if you need a bit of a follow-up thrill, but in my opinion, Faithful Place and Broken Harbor are not really worth the time.
I wasn't sure what to think of this novel, but halfway through it turned into a "well at least let's finish it" book. I dunno, I'm very lukewarm on it. I think it was supposed to be witty -- guess what, there is highly surreal campy cultish horror hiding behind the facade of a fallen academic's dead-end job in a Texas cubicle! Complete with Fringe-esque pale men who keep showing up and doing mysterious things, and strange undergrounds that are a little too overtly Dantean, a ghost cat, excruciating Texas twang verbal tics that are overdone, too. Like the clueless boss who mixes his metaphors EVERY TIME. Or the girlfriend who always says ain't/was and then helpfully winces and corrects herself to aren't/were every time, which after a time began to seem like a lazy author's way of getting around being snobbish toward a genuine undereducated poor southern girl. Like, if she hadn't been so helpfully self-abasing, he would've been too much of a snob to fuck her, or something? Poor Callie. Luckily it was her GREATEST DREAM to read the Norton Anthology and parade around in the protagonist's buttondown oxfords. (Hey Levelland, all two of you reading this, Callie is exactly like a young Kerri Rivera, I think. Sardonic, doesn't take shit. The most fun reading this book was picturing Kerri in her place.) This was kind of a fun take on zombies, I suppose, except the excruciating realities of a cubicle job AND the awful flat hellish Texan heat were so overdone that they occasionally went right over the top of surreal into belabored. This would have been a great update on the zombie genre if Shaun of the Dead hadn't already done it with more wit and humanity, you know?
38. Broken Harbor, by Tana French
Super glad I waited for this to come in at the library rather than buy it -- I love Tana French, but this was a terrible slog, had to force myself to finish it. I guess it's all been downhill since In The Woods, in my opinion, because in that book she was clever enough to combine an old mystery, a new mystery, and a love story gone wrong (plus it stars Clive Owen, in my head); in this one, we just had a new mystery that never quite lived up to its surreal touches, and I guessed 75% of the Great Big Twist about 100 pages in advance. There were none of the layers, especially in the main character, who was so emphatically Old School Boyo Hardbitten Irish Detective that he seemed to have no inner life whatsoever. Or, I guess this one did have an old story layered into the new/current story, but it wasn't really mysterious enough, it was just This Made Me A Tough Guy. Okay, so what? The most compelling part of this story was where Detective Hardbitten almost fell into bro love with his rookie partner, except he didn't. What a disappointment. Oh also, French's characters seem to all turn out to be mysterious synesthetes, but this seems to be an authorial tick more than anything else, and it got old. People are always shaking the mysterious waft of perfume out of their nose, or being surprised by weird theatrical flashbacks. Her writing isn't awful, but what seemed deft in novel #1 becomes old hat and annoying, to me, by #4. My recommendation: go read In The Woods if you haven't, or read it again (I might), and then maybe The Likeness if you need a bit of a follow-up thrill, but in my opinion, Faithful Place and Broken Harbor are not really worth the time.